Push, the monster that won’t die: Push, created by that Dr. Frankenstein of the bubble, Pointcast, will not die.

AOL bought the successor to Pointcast and with its new Communicator email/IM client, it adds a push screensaver, complete with annoying, moving graphics that’ll give you a seizure.

I first saw Pointcast before it was released and I hated it immediately. First, it seemed ridiculous to me to deliver news and advertising via a screensaver, for your screensaver comes on when you’re not using your computer; this was the delivery channel aimed at an audience down the hall in the bathroom. Second, the application was a hog of computer power and bandwidth; it brought down corporate networks the world around. Third, it was simply overdone with annoying graphics and other wasted bits; it was a program with a big ego.

I left the demo and decided that I could deliver the value of Pointcast with nothing more than a browser page that refreshed every minute with the latest news. Thus, with some help, Newsflash was born. It still lives. Pointcast turned down $500 million from Rupert Murdoch and eventually died.

And the saga continues: Gary Wolf, who just wrote a history of Wired magazine, declares on his book-blog [via Scott Rosenberg] that the single dumbest story ever in the magazine was its cover cooing over push.

Push! (5.03) In March, 1997 Wired said goodbye to the Web browser. In an article so important it started on the cover, the Wired editors announced: